


Secret Files

by AnonymousVow



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, competent Wesley, loose interpretation of timeline, semi fix-it?, somewhat cracky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousVow/pseuds/AnonymousVow
Summary: After Wolfram & Hart is taken down, Angel Investigations and the Scoobies find out what happened to Wesley. It's not what any of them had expected.





	Secret Files

When Angel and his team take down the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart (backed by the Scoobies and a group of rather disturbingly cute and bloodthirsty young Slayers), they're not left with very much. Angel loses all his cars, Lorne his suits, Fred all her lab records and experiments, Gunn all his legal knowledge (and more, probably - he's finding it harder to remember things). Spike doesn’t really lose much, but that’s because everything he owns, he carries on him. Their money is gone, right out of their bank accounts, which they had expected and didn't even mind - holding onto the wages of sin, after they had demolished said workplace of sin, and in front of the Scoobies, doesn't sit very well with them really.

There are a few things they do hold onto. Some weapons, which they promise to have ritually cleansed just in case; some of the nicer stuff they happened to have in places other than their apartments (all of which are blown up in obvious retaliation); Fred finds a commemorative plate which she promptly hands to some of the more trigger-happy Slayers for target practice. And files. Lots and lots of files. Files which are in no sort of order, just slung into an empty room in the Hyperion.

Giles, who had been won over when he found out Angel had been planning a Trojan Horse operation, is upset when he sees the utter lack of organization, and that they had not saved more of the artifacts and records available to them at Wolfram & Hart.

"Well, we didn't have time to go through them. Maybe if Wes..." But Angel winces and doesn't finish his sentence, and everyone from LA averts their gaze.

***

They rest up at the Hyperion, whose defenses are buoyed by Giles and Willow's wards. They discover, when setting them up, that an initial layer of wards and protective spells already exists - glimmering, to their witch-senses, with deceptively faint blue radiance.

"Oh," Willow says suddenly, after tying a ward to an existing one. "They're Wesley's!"

And once she's said it, Giles is surprised that he hadn't noticed it himself, and that he hadn’t done so immediately.

Wesley's magic-signature speaks less of power and more of control - wards placed precisely and with scrupulous thought, not quite complete coverage but situated so that it's practically that. No single spell or ward of note, but interwoven with such finesse that it takes Giles' breath away when he really studies it - and so subtle that he does have to study it to realize it. If Giles thinks of his own spellwork as a series of torches, set in regular array, and Willow's as serried ranks of bonfires, blazing and brilliant, then Wesley's is a network of candles - flickering, quiet, and exquisitely wrought.

There are some wards that Willow actually stops to coo over, earning her startled looks. No one from Angel Investigations had known the wards were there; Faith opines that they'd been set in place after the whole debacle with the Beast, now remembering having seen Wesley pacing the grounds before she left for Sunnydale with Willow - meaning, if he'd done it in secret as a last goodbye before he’d disappeared, it had been wasted effort as the team had then promptly moved into Wolfram & Hart. Giles thinks it's fairly consistent with the rest of Wesley's life in America - good intentions and real skill applied to no avail, no matter how much the younger Watcher improves - but wisely does not mention this to anyone. Anyway, they are proving useful now.

 

***

 

It's this, wondering how much Wesley had improved and how much had been in him even in Sunnydale - he remembers, now, high marks and glowing praise from Watcher Academy instructors in Wesley's paperwork, that Giles had been too angry to pay much attention to - that makes Giles focus on the Wolfram & Hart documents about Wesley that cross his desk. He, Fred, Willow, and a couple of the more bookish young Slayers are trying to sort the files out while the others patrol the ravaged streets of Los Angeles. 

There are other things that he could be working on - files on the Hellmouth, on the Watchers' Council, on Buffy and Angel specifically - but when he finds the first file (a transcript of a security team debriefing - they'd been mounting surveillance on Wesley, and noted how many magic practitioners he'd been visiting - and arms-dealers) he sets himself to this one task.

At first, he merely gathers. The documents pile up on his desk. It is only when he realizes how much there is - and what that means - that he stops to begin actually reading.

  
***

Much of it is boring - surveillance transcripts like that first file, exhaustive in detail. Analyses of Wesley's character, aimed at wanting to know if he would join them and how much he would bring to the table if he did. (The conclusion: A lot.) Appendices and photos and recovered receipts. There are files about his childhood (and Giles had never appreciated his father as much as he did now, after reading about Wesley's) and files about his schooling that makes Giles frown - because this is a clear indication that Wolfram & Hart have a source within the higher ranks of the Council.

And some of it is interesting - very interesting.

***

This document, a master timeline drawing on various sources, is primarily in English but annotated heavily in Jaska'al, the sharp angles of the demon-script filling margins and white-space in green-blue ink that glitters slightly. 

Giles stays up all night translating it.

***

  * Asset LM3 has made contact with Potential WWP. Standard Salome protocol to follow.  
  
_(A Jaska’al note about the human concept of a femme fatale beside)_


  * Asset LM3 and Potential WWP engaged in conversation. Tonight's duration of talk exceeded that of previous night's by significant amount. WWP hostile but non-violent.  
  

  * Asset LM3 has succeeded in Phase 1 of Salome protocol.  
  

  * Potential WWP still hostile to Asset LM3, but receptive to advances.  
  

  * Asset LM3 has spent the night in Potential WWP’s domicile. Sounds indicate vigorous amount of human mating.  
  

  * Asset LM3 has spent the night again. Potential WWP still appears hostile? But allows her inside his domicile with minimal argument  
  
_(Why must humans be so confusing in their behavior? Why are their combat and mating responses so often similar? Why do they overlap at all?)_  
  

  * Potential WWP is storing Holtz subordinate in closet. Asset LM3 confirms.  
  
_(Human colleagues asking if this is_ “sex thing” _. Why is every permutation of human behavior a possible_ “sex thing”)  
  

  * Asset LM3 has confirmed that Potential WWP is not engaging in mating with Holtz subordinate. “I keep him too tired for anyone else” - LM3. LM3 has received official commendation for her dedication to the success of this project.  
  

  * Potential WWP has bypassed Operation Fallen Angel by retrieving Subject Angelus on his own.  
  
_(Scribbled pros and cons of this development occupy most of the left margin of this page)_  
  

  * Potential WWP has invited Asset LM3 to his domicile on his own initiative. Upon his leaving, LM3 engaged in a series of movements later identified as a “victory dance.” Upon being questioned, LM3 claimed this was due to her joy at having advanced the Salome Protocol so far.  
  

  * Assistant KT expressed interest in Potential WWP’s bedroom prowess after reviewing surveillance footage.  
  
_(What was so impressive about the footage?)_  
  
Then, in another hand: _(The length of the performance and the number of times LM3 cried out apparently outside human male norms.)_  
  

  * Assistant KT now missing. Asset LM3 maintains claim of complete ignorance of Assistant KT’s very existence to begin with, much less of her ultimate fate.  
  

  * Internal investigation clears Asset LM3 of any involvement with Assistant KT’s disappearance.  
  
_(She did it.)_  
  
_(Obviously)_  
  
_(But the fact that she has engineered it so perfectly is worthy of praise.)_  
  

  * Asset LM3 has been compromised. Psychic scans have confirmed - she is now more loyal to Potential WWP than to Wolfram & Hart.  
  
_(Was it the mating?)_  
  
_(Humans males are the ones who are supposed to be weak to the physical sensations of mating! Not females! No one informed us of the possiblity of a reverse-Salome!)_  
  

  * Then, a blank page with “The Beast” inked into the middle in big, shaky Ja’askal characters.  
  

  * LM3 removed from all active cases and projects and remanded to the White Room for corrective measures.  
  

  * WWP infiltrated _(the word infiltrated circled, jaggedly, and Ja’askal interrogative characters ring it. “How? Why? How! Failure! Failure!”)_ and won into the White Room.  
  
_(Rites of Alta’is’ava? Black Tower, Red Circle? Spells of Dinas Emrys?)_  
  
_(Shards of thasra crystal found in foyer)_  
  
_(Blood sacrifice?)_ Calculations of how much human blood would have been needed scribbled next to this note.  
  
The uncertainty and desperate fear, the complete shock of the successful infiltration, bleed through the ink and characters.  
  

  * LM3’s soul and existence claimed by WWP. Senior Partners, through Liasion, agree and honor the claim. Premises vacated immediately thereafter.



***

  
Giles pauses in the translation of the annotations surrounding this last entry. At one point, the characters are tilted and curved in a way that, Giles knows, indicates that the meaning is to be considered with a poetic flair - a rough equivalent of "fairy-tale". Which, combined with the characters themselves, would mean....True Love's Kiss?

Giles immediately doubts his own translation but considers the next part, an angry denunciation of the whole concept which shows the unknown writer was as dubious as himself and angry about it being the only phrase to fit.

"The Kiss of True Love? **_The Kiss of True Love?_ **This is stupidity pure! There is no such thing even among humans! But all our sources agree that this is how WWP won LM3’s freedom! A * _untranslatable but insulting_ * clause that no one knew existed but which the Senior Partners themselves bow to?"  
  
***  
  
Giles knows he has no right. Absolutely no right. He’d had nothing to do with it, and in fact had treated the other Englishman with disdain and anger, and had greeted his departure with nothing but relief, when he had thought about him at all. 

But he can't help it.

He is proud of Wesley.

***

Tired, Giles falls asleep on a couch in the office. He leaves his work on the table; and when he wakes up, it is to see Willow reading with a wide-eyed expression, Faith (of all people) hanging over her shoulder and mouthing “What the fuck, what the fuck” over and over.

 

 


End file.
